


Handsome In Her Eyes

by afteriwake



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-09 21:47:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4365356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock has never particularly regarded himself as handsome or attractive. Striking, yes, but he attributes his looks as to being something that puts him on a "freak' pedestal thanks to childhood wounds run deep. But the night before he's to leave the country on his one way trip, Molly shows just how mistaken that assumption is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Handsome In Her Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> So this was another prompt from an anonymous Tumblr user that I got a while back ( _Sherlock is actually really self conscious about his looks, because he always thought he looked weird compared to other people but Molly reminds him of how attractive he really is to her._ ) that I think is probably not as fluffy as they intended and a bit more mature? I don't know, it just came out sexier. I wasn't sure whether to rate it explicit or not but it's a brief and pretty vague scene so I went with mature. I'll change the rating if people think it should be explicit.

He could never understand how people could find him attractive. When he was a child he could concede he had features which might be adorable or endearing, but as he got older and the lines on his face got sharper and more angular he started to feel as though he looked more reptilian, in a way. Like some alien creature more than an aesthetically pleasing human. The girls may have given him sidelong glances but the cruel jabs and repeated utterances of the word “freak” by the boys he went to school with burrowed deep into his psyche.

He was tall and lanky, not too concerned with the perfect physique. His mind was the only muscle he cared to exercise, so he did not obsess over whatever fad diet would add muscles to his body, nor did her care about what exercises would chisel said muscles to their perfection. He supposed if he cared overmuch some women might _possibly_ find him appealing, but as he did not care for the attentions of either sex as he made his way through university it was of no importance.

His hair did whatever it damn well pleased, to be honest, dark curls going every which way. He didn’t bother styling it, merely running a comb through it when the voice in his head that sounded far too much like his mother said maybe it was a bit too wild manish, that perhaps it didn’t give off the best impression of “capable consulting detective’ and rather made him look like “absentminded genius without a steady income.”

His clothes were the only thing he made it a point to take pride in, but only to a point. He had spent a large part of what was left of his inheritance after the unfortunate addiction to heroin on the suits and the shirts and their upkeep, but they were well made and lasted him quite a long time. Most people didn’t realize that the suits he wore, unlike his brother's, were not made that year but were a few years older. Classics were classics for a reason, he supposed, and what looked good one year could still, if one was careful, look good years later. He was proof of that.

Still, when his popularity rose and people began asking for interviews and photographs, he did not see the reason why. Even when Irene Adler blatantly focused her attention on him, trying to intimate to him with her sexuality and come hither looks that she wanted to bed him, he did not see himself as a sex symbol. He did not see himself as sexy or attractive or even moderately good-looking. He saw himself as a freak specimen who was in the spotlight for being a freak, and that was the only reason anyone wanted to pay attention to him.

It wasn’t until nearly three years after his fall he started to see it all differently.

He hadn’t _meant_ for anything to happen between them. He hadn’t meant for her to get close, for him to allow her to be close, for her to be so damn important to him. But after two years of playing dead he had started to think that maybe it would be all right if Molly was close. Of course, he hadn’t counted on her having moved on away from fancying him. He hadn’t counted on Tom being in the picture at all. And he certainly hadn’t counted on the tiny spark of jealousy that lit up when he saw the engagement ring on her finger. 

He hadn’t liked it at all, and so he squashed it down. Pretended to care about her and the Meat Dagger, in his head plotting about ways to bring about the end of the relationship without ever having her find out he was behind it, because he knew if she did she would never speak to him again. There was no need, though. It petered out on its own. And then he had made the stupidest gamble of his life and thrown away any chance of finding out what could have been. He’d thought about avoiding her, about leaving her a note, to be delivered after his plane was in the air. But he couldn’t do that to her. He couldn’t hurt her that way. John and Mary could have the airfield, they could have the final good-bye, but Molly would have his last evening. He had no expectations when he went to see her, no plans, no presumptions on what would happen, but he just hoped she would let him stay close. 

He realized she had known when she opened the door. Maybe she had guessed from the tone of his voice when he asked to see her, but he imagined Mycroft had told her at some point between Christmas Day and now. She knew this was the last time she would ever see him. When he was inside her home he surprised her by pulling her close, by wrapping his arms around her. She slipped her arms around his waist and they stood there in silence, just being close. He took his strength from her, his warmth, his comfort.

He still wasn’t sure who initiated the kiss, but soon they were trying to get as close as they could but their clothes were in the way, and the need to touch her skin and feel every inch of her consumed him. He had to burn her into his mind, the real her and not the version who would represent cool and rational logic, but the warm and passionate woman who wanted him, the one who wanted him so badly she didn’t care that they were still partially clothed and not anywhere near a bed when she took him into her hands and stroked him and made him feel as though he was actually attractive to someone. Their first time was hard and fast against the wall next to her bedroom door, and the shout of his name of her lips when she came was music more lovely than any violin concerto he’d ever heard.

They didn’t have much time, but he vowed to make the most of what they had. They made it to her bedroom, to her bed, and lavished each other with all the attention they could. He held true to memorizing the way she felt, the curves of her body and the scent and taste of her skin, so that he could keep her close. He knew she was doing the same, and in the quiet times when they were catching their breath she would caress a patch of skin or run her fingers through his hair and talk about what she liked most about that part of his appearance. And all the things he’d hated about himself were all the things she loved about him; how she loved staring at the sharp lines of his face when she should be working and the fact she had to stand on her toes to kiss him and that there was always the urge to run her fingers through his hair. And every time she said something he would grab her hand and kiss her palm as a part of him he’d loathed deep down eased a bit, knowing someone loved all the things he’d grown to think made him look strange. He would carry that with him, too, just like he would carry memories of this night.

They stayed awake as long as possible, but soon she fell asleep and he allowed himself to join her briefly, allowed himself to sleep in the arms of someone who truly loved him, loved all of him, even the parts he didn’t love himself, and he knew because of that he would be able to leave the next day with a sense of peace and a determination to defy his brother and the odds in front of them and come back to her. She had given him the greatest gift he could think of, and he wanted to make sure that she knew exactly how much it had meant to him.


End file.
